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So two months ago, I finished a draft for my next novel, DOWN A DARK RIVER, about an inspector at Scotland Yard named Michael Corravan. It is set in the spring of 1878, mere months after a bribery and fraud scandal has put three Senior Inspectors in jail, and the Yard is viewed with suspicion by the press and the public alike. One morning, a murdered young woman, the daughter of a wealthy judge in Mayfair, is found floating down the Thames in a lighter boat. 

I sent it to my agent Josh, who said: “It’s amazing! I love it! The history, the suspense, the inspector! But, Karen, it’s 136,000 words long!” This genre of police procedural, he explained, usually runs about 100K—and if it’s historical, you can get a way with a little longer.

I know I tend to overwrite that first draft; I “write my way in” to a book and have to chop out the first chapter or two. Or seven. (As in the case of my first novel.) Much of that is back story, which is necessary to keep in my brain, but not necessary to keep in the manuscript. The comments about my first novel, A LADY IN THE SMOKE, included that it was well written but at times a bit slow, a bit wordy. So I believed him. I promised to do what I could and hung up the phone.

36,000 words? One-quarter of the book?! It’s like going on an all-lettuce diet. Painful. 

Among the many lessons I learned from my first book was the value of giving it to readers who come cold to a manuscript. So I reached out. Six people agreed to read the book: a friend who has published four books and has her fifth coming out; a professor of Victorian literature; two friends who read widely across every genre; my sister, who is a former humanities teacher and likes to scribble in margins; and a museum curator/archivist in California who was incredibly supportive of LADY. All of them asked me what kind of feedback would be most helpful, so I wrote a cover letter, which for most included this paragraph: 

Dear Reader (just like in Jane Eyre): The kindest and most helpful comment you can make is, I’m getting bored. Because if you are, a potential editor definitely will be. Tell me where your mind wanders because that’s where my cuts will begin. Tell me any time your brain “stops” you and pulls you out of the story. You can just make a quick note: “She wouldn’t say this.” “Why is he angry?” “Feels too modern.” “Wait, didn’t he say he was 19 before?” “Who’s this character? Can’t remember.” “This feels like an info dump.” “You’ve used this word three times in a row.” That is usually all I need to take a closer, directed look at a particular passage. 

People took varying lengths of time—from three days to three weeks—and provided feedback in various ways: one called me to talk; one typed up pages of notes; three used the “insert comment” function; one scribbled on hard copy. My author friend completely agreed with my agent; shorter is easier to sell and appropriate to the genre, she insisted, pointing to dialogs in particular that could be cut by half. The professor suggested other cuts and pointed out that the word “lapin” in French is actually “rabbit” not “wolf.” (Arg. I know that. So how did I read over that passage a dozen times and not catch it?) My sister and reader friends pointed out dozens of inconsistencies in character, typos, grammar mistakes, and subplots that didn’t seem to go anywhere and could be nixed. The curator/archivist pushed me to think hard about the relationships between the characters: Why are James Everett (the doctor) and my inspector even friends, when they’re so different? And how deeply does the inspector love Belinda, and why doesn’t she appear until chapter 14?

Six weeks later, I have a manuscript that is considerably leaner … 106,000 words and so very much better because of my readers, including these six and others, who have read my first pages and scraps. In my gratitude journal (which I try to keep daily) my beta-readers are 1, 2, and 3 today.  

Well, it’s been almost six weeks since my book published, and it has not been a train wreck … with the engines careening off the tracks and the carriages going up in flames.
 
I’ve received reviews with everything from five stars to one. Nine-paragraph reviews and one-word reviews. I’ve had people write to me in the middle of the night saying they just finished it and simply had to tell me how much they liked it. I’ve had people who praised all the “fascinating historical details” and those who said there was “just too much” about railways and stock markets. I’ve had people tell me the romance was “sweet, sweet,” “passionate,” and “tepid.” I’ve had people tell me that they went online because they didn’t believe there were such a thing as railway surgeons, and then they were pleased that I’d taken the time to get my facts wonderfully right. I’ve also been corrected by someone who told me that in fact, the Italians do not call laudanum “bella donna” (although a railway surgeon might be excused for thinking they did).
 
If responses are cards, this was what, in sales, we called “a full deck.”
 
When I was in my twenties, I did door-to-door sales. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. (This was before childbirth or writing a book.) One of our sales exercises involved a deck of cards. Each person in the room would receive a card. Anything with a picture was a sale (“yes”). A 2-8 was a “no.” A 9 or 10 was a mean, nasty rejection. The trainee would go around the room to each person, the cards in random order. As soon as the trainee’s attitude started to slump, the person holding the card could choose to say “no.” You get the idea. The whole idea was that the salesperson had to present the same positive, friendly approach to EVERY single one. On the one hand, I found it a bummer to discover that I often had very little control over the outcome of a sales call. But it was also oddly reassuring to discover that the response often had NOTHING to do with me. My job was to show up, keep my side of the street clean, be consistent, and keep going. Other people’s response really wasn’t my responsibility.
 
Neverthless, it is easier to do in a training room than in real life.
 
One day I walked into an office and had the owner snarl at me, “Get out of here! I don’t want any of your crap, you stupid … ”
 
I don’t even remember what else she said. Crestfallen, bruised, with a twisted, horrible feeling in my gut, I went to the next door. This woman was very polite, listened to what I had to say, and even expressed some interest. I was just about to walk out the door when she said, “Oh—by the way, don’t go next door. Her husband divorced her a few weeks ago, and she’s about to lose her lease. She’s just not in a good place.”
 
It was a life-changer for me.
 
And I realize, as a writer, I cannot ask myself, “What will people think of this?” Down that path looms the darkness of writer’s block, at least for me. The proper questions are, “Have I wholly immersed myself in this city, these crimes? Have I done my research? Am I letting myself muck around in the rag-and-bone shop of the hearts of these characters?”
 
If the answers are yes, I keep on.